NOTE: I AM ALSO NOW ADDING A SLIDEPACK THAT I USED WITH A GROUP IN MARYLAND THAT TAKES SOME OF THIS FURTHER AND DISCUSSES MORE ABOUT GOD, INCLUDING: NEO-DARWINISM, GOD’S SOVEREIGNTY, ETC. TO AID IN ONE OF THE DISCUSSIONS THAT I HAVE IN THE LESSON I AM ALSO ATTACHING RAY COMFORT’S INTRODUCTION TO THE 150TH ANNIVERSARY OF ORIGIN OF SPECIES. HE DOES A GREAT JOB WITH THIS. CHECK IT ALL OUT!

We call these the “small” questions like C.S. Lewis called his buildings the “New Buildings” – meaning they were only 300 years old. These questions are “small” like that, when compared to theodicy, the existance of God and neo-darwinism.

These are the slide packs for SysTheo test next week. We spent the entire first semester studying God because Tozer says that all problems and subjects and doctrines rely fully on the Doctrine of Who God Is. To quote,

“What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us. … Worship is pure or base as the worshiper entertains high or low thoughts of God. For this reason the gravest question before the Church is always God Himself, and the most portentous fact about any man is not what he at a given time may say or do, but what he in his deep heart conceives God to be like. We tend by a secret law of the soul to move toward our mental image of God. This is true not only of the individual Christian, but of the company of Christians that composes the Church. Always the most revealing thing about the Church is her idea of God, just as her most significant message is what she says about Him or leaves unsaid, for her silence is often more eloquent than her speech. …”

and again,

“The history of mankind will probably show that no people has ever risen above its religion, and man’s spiritual history will positively demonstrate that no religion has ever been greater than its idea of God.”

and finally,

“All the problems of heaven and earth, though they were to confront us together and at once, would be nothing compared with the overwhelming problem of God: That He is; what He is like; and what we as moral beings must do about Him…”

. . . Based on that truth, He must be studied before considering all of the other doctrines. We did that and now we look at the rest of Theology. The seam though is a concept called Perichoresis. This is the idea that is much analogous to the Analogy of Being and General Revelation. In relation to the nature of the Incarnation, Church father, Gregory of Nyssa says that we ought not to be too surprised by the Incarnation (I will explain why this is in another post soon and will put a link here) because, quote

This is not to be confused with pantheism, rather that God, expressing all creation out of Himself (He spoke and there was – not made from things which were visible [Heb. 11:3]) made a universe that look sand works like Him – the Triune Godhead, 3-in-1. In God there is Unity and Diversity. In Creation there is Unity and Diversity. As He is, so are we.